White
by Dreamiflame
Summary: Post-Chosen, Faith, Dawn and Willow are in England. Faith reflects.


Title: White  
  
Author: Dreamiflame  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Disclaimer: I only borrowed these characters, thanks Mister Whedon. They're good as new, I promise.  
  
Notes: This is sort of a game of tie the references together. I was walking out of the library with a song lyric in my head, and it ran into one of my favorite books and careened back off into this.  
  
The roses were white, which was wrong. Willow had told Faith as she planted them that she had put a spell on them. "They'll represent you, when they blossom," smiling through her long red hair, a smudge of dirt on one cheek. And the roses had bloomed today, but they were white. Faith hadn't been white for almost ever.  
  
She touched one white bud and thought, they should be red. Red for the blood and red for the passion. Faith closed her eyes and remembered the first few days in England, when she and Dawn had lain out beneath the oak tree by the river and Willow had read to them of Alice, and her Adventures. Faith imagined herself with a paintbrush, with black spades on her white shirt, painting the roses. She laughed and shook her head.  
  
Or maybe, the roses should be black and blue. "Paint your roses black and blue," she sang softly, a fragment of a song she'd heard playing on Buffy's radio once. Black and blue for the bruises, and the pain. The word pain has always conjured the soft/sharp feel of a bruise to Faith. People cut bruises out of apples, but not their own flesh. Faith has always liked the texture of the bruised apple on her tongue.  
  
She heard Willow's step on the stones of the garden path, and turn to see her. "I think I should paint them," gesturing to the white (wrong) roses, "but I haven't decided what color yet."  
  
Willow tilted her head to the side and smiled. "We're not in Wonderland, and Giles won't order your head off."  
  
Faith looked up at the sky. Willow was wrong about that. England might as well have been Wonderland, and Faith could feel herself changing. Yesterday she had said something was 'rather nice,' with the stress on rather's second syllable, the r's rolling smoothly off her tongue. "It's a different world," she told the clouds, and wondered if Willow would hear or understand.  
  
The hand on her arm made her look down, and Willow wasn't smiling, but her eyes were warm. "So you believe in England, now?" and the curve of her shoulder meant that she was referencing something again. Faith thought hard and remembered Dawn, insistent on showing her something, forcing her to watch a movie on Giles's tiny tv. It had been funny, she remembered, and one of the characters hadn't believed in England.  
  
She smiled and reached down to the soil beneath her roses. "It's awfully solid to be just a conspiracy of cartographers." Willow grinned broadly and crouched beside her, her hands glowing.  
  
"They're fine," she told Faith, and stood again, brushing off her hands. "Do you want tea?" Faith shook her head and Willow squeezed her shoulder briefly and went off, leaving Faith and the white (wrong, her mind insisted) roses behind.  
  
Fine, she repeated silently, and assumed a meditative pose before the rose bush. Dawn found her there later, and plopped down beside her, still glowing the faint green that appeared when she had been doing magick. Buffy had been furious at her decision, but Dawn hadn't listened, had just packed, kissed her Slayer girlfriend goodbye, and followed Giles onto the plane. Faith had thought, and still did think, that Dawn was perfectly suited to be a witch and a Watcher, given her long history as a magickal artifact. Buffy had denounced the whole lot of them and sulked off to Chicago.  
  
Dawn nudged Faith, and nodded at the roses. "You don't like them?" she asked, and Faith started to shrug, then shook her head.  
  
"No," she said. "Willow said they were supposed to represent me, so why are they white? I'm not white." She picked one of the full blooms, deftly avoiding the thorns and brought it to her nose. The scent was full, rich and heady.  
  
A pebble near the base of the bush shook gently, then rose carefully into the air as Dawn focused on it. "Well," she said, as though they were two normal girls, and a small stone wasn't floating in front of them, "you weren't."  
  
Methodically, Faith stripped off the thorns, then twirled the rose between her fingers. "You think I've changed?"  
  
Dawn plucked the rose from her fingers and smelled it herself. "Mmm. Of course you have. We all have." She motioned to the pebble and made it do a loop-de-loop. Faith had to grin.  
  
"But white?" Dawn broke off most of the stem and tucked the rose behind Faith's ear. "A leopard can't change its spots, Dawnie."  
  
Rolling her eyes, Dawn turned back to her pebble, lifting up two others and attempting to move them in a juggling motion using only her magick. Faith had seen Willow do the same sort of thing with plates, sixteen of them before she lost control of one, and Faith had bruised her hip to keep it from breaking. "You're not a leopard," Dawn informed her, and Faith swatted her arm. One of the pebbles shuddered and fell, and Dawn frowned, biting her lips as she pulled it back into the air. "People change, you know."  
  
"I didn't think they changed that much." Faith reached up and touched her rose, feeling a warm glow starting in her chest. Hope, she thought. It seemed to have been a long time since she'd felt it.  
  
Dawn shrugged. "Ask Willow if you don't believe me." She shifted her concentration to her pebbles, wobbling another up to join in the dance.  
  
Faith stood and stretched her arms to the sky. She didn't need to ask Willow, because she knew Dawn was right. The sun was warm on her face, and the white rose was sweet to her nose. For the first time in a long while, Faith let herself feel light. 


End file.
